Euro Production Incentives: Austria, Belgium & Croatia

PREMIUM: Jay Stuart takes a look at the efforts being made by Austria, Belgium and Croatia to lure international TV drama co-productions.

“Benefits and incentives are tremendously important for producers,” says Arie Bohrer, the president of the European Film Commission Network, an association of national and regional film commissions representing members from 27 countries, and the head of Location Austria, his country’s national commission. “They are absolutely essential for a country to attract productions, and television productions are becoming more and more important. There are two factors to look at: the location and the incentives. These are almost equal, except in the case of productions like a [James] Bond film, which have independent financing. I would say that there is a trend toward the incentives becoming more important. Another trend is for countries to expand their film provisions into television. Britain and Ireland typify this direction.”

Austria currently has tax-incentive schemes in place for TV co-productions as well as film co-productions covering up to 25 percent of local spending, with a maximum of €1.2 million per project. The total allocation is €1.5 million, which practically translates into two good-sized productions per year. Efforts are in progress to expand the scheme, currently available to service companies for feature films, to include TV productions.

Big international TV productions brought to Austria include The Pillars of the Earth, produced by Tandem Communications and Muse Entertainment, and World Without End, produced by Tandem with Scott Free Productions, Take 5 Productions and Galafilm.

Bohrer, a former line producer himself, says, “The reality is that you either eliminate incentives everywhere and nobody offers them or you have to play the game and offer them. Money is not easy to come by and the demand from producers for cheap money is growing.”

Incentives can work fast. After introducing a 20-percent cash rebate scheme in 2012, Croatia attracted HBO’s epic series Game of Thrones for outdoor shooting of several scenes. The amount of production in Croatia, which boasts a wide range of locations, was up threefold in 2013. Part of the third season of Borgia was shot there this year.

“Every country is joining what has been called ‘the incentives race’ and is trying to profile itself as a production hub playing on its comparative advantages,” says Ana Delic, the filming in Croatia program coordinator at the Croatian Audiovisual Centre. “Although the amount that can be obtained through incentives plays a significant role when producers are deciding where to shoot, other factors come into play, such as locations, weather, crews and facilities, as well as the transparency and stability of the incentives scheme. There is also a question of loyalty and word of mouth.”

Belgium has excellent financial incentives, too.

“For us, attracting production is about the whole package,” says Jan Roekens, the head of production at Screen Flanders.  “We have the Flanders Region, which offers the specific settings that the production requires. Screen Flanders provides support. We also have a Belgian federal-tax shelter and the possibility of a local broadcast partner, and sometimes the Flanders Audiovisual Fund can come in as well.”

Screen Flanders can provide up to €400,000 in investment, while the tax shelter goes all the way up to €15 million, covering not more than half the budget of the production.

In the case of The White Queen, 17.5 percent of the total financing came from Belgium. For The Missing, the Belgian proportion is likely to reach 22 percent of the budget. For The Team, partly shot in Flanders, the Belgian share will reach about 25 percent.

“The incentive market is competitive,” Roekens says. “Every country is trying to do the same thing.”